Swift Escape 696 motorhome. A family-friendly award winner at the Practical Motorhome Awards.

If you’ve seen the current edition of Practical Motorhome magazine, you’ll know it’s the special Awards issue, highlighting a lot of what’s good about the whole motorhome buying process.

I’ll declare an interest here, because I played a small part in all this as one of the (many) judges. Indeed, I’m lucky enough to help out with the judging of all kinds of caravan and motorhome awards – if you’re wondering why there is such a variety of winners of these different competitions, I’ll just say the judging process and criteria is very different for each.

A motorhome with a sauna? As unveiled by German motorhome manufacturer Eura Mobil.

Europe’s biggest caravan and motorhome exhibition venue? Birmingham’s NEC doesn’t come close, I’m afraid. It’s in Germany. Dusseldorf, to be exact. Caravan Salon takes place every year here (it used to be in nearby Essen), and this year celebrated its 50th anniversary.

And I was there. It was something of a flying visit. I was testing a Reimo Sport Camper (from Kent-based Concept Multi-Car, but actually straight off their hire fleet).

What a week this has been. I viewed a gorgeous and only slightly faded 1986 Auto-Sleeper Talisman GL at Southern Motorhome Centre in Berkshire on Monday (it could be yours for only £7995) before catching a flight to southern Germany to view the very latest mega motorhomes from Aschbach-based Concorde. Wow, these are impressive. Perhaps they should be, considering the top models are anything from £100,000 up into full orbit. I might be able to stretch to insuring one of these amazing monsters, but I certainly couldn’t afford to buy one…